English 101 Portfolio
by maddy.karlick
Summary: Maddy Karlick English 101 Roberto Ascalon English Portfolio
1. Presentation Essay

Maddy Karlick

11/28/14

Roberto Ascalon

English 101

The Literacy of Fan Fiction

This essay discusses the ideas of several writers' concepts and how they relate to the community of fan fiction. The author used the framing technique by framing fan fiction around the ideas of Rebecca Shaffner, Henry Jenkins, Mary Lousie Pratt, James Paul Gee, and Kathleen Blake Yancey and their ideas on fan fiction, affinity spaces, contact zones, and literacy. In conclusion, the author asks questions of how fan fiction relates to each of these concepts and gives evidence of how they are similar.

In today's 21st century, literacy has so many different meanings and forms. According to Kathleen Blake Yancey in _Make Not Only in Words: Compositions in an New Key_, she talks about literacy being expressed only through reading and writing in the early years but has developed and expanded over the past hundred years. Literacy used to mean simply reading and writing on paper. With technological advances, literacy now means reading and writing through books and essays and through screens such as media, blogs, and online websites. One example of these sites is fan fiction. Fan fiction is an online sight as to where people can read and write stories that are based off of other authors' work. However, can fan fiction be considered one of Yancey's new forms of literacy?

Yancey discusses the use of literacy in schooling in America in the 19th century and how it was confined in the walls of a classroom, but now in the 21st century, literacy is expanding and writing is crossing borders rather than just staying in a classroom. "According to these assessments—an alphabet soup of assessments, the SAT, the NEAP, the ACT—writing IS 'words on paper,' composed on the page with a pen or pencil by students who write words on paper, yes—_but_ who _also_ compose words and images and create audio files on web logs (blogs), in word processors, with video editors and Web editors and in e-mail and on presentation software and in instant messaging and on listservs and on bulletin boards—and no doubt in whatever genre will emerge in the next ten minutes." (Yancey 177) With the invention of the computer and internet, there have been several new ways to express writing. It may not all be formal and the use of correct grammar is not important, however it is still an expression of literacy that is crucial to communication today.

Fan fiction is a community of millions of people across the globe that write and read and share ideas of stories created from ideas of other authors. Fan fiction is a prime example of what Yancey talks about in her essay. "Writers compose in the context of other writers and thinkers and speakers. They imitate them directly and indirectly; they quote them, write in direct reference to them, paraphrase them, and frame their own work in these contexts." (Yancey 190) Fan fiction writers do exactly that. Rebecca Shaffner seconds that idea in her essay _In Defense of Fan Fiction_ when she states: "fan fiction is simply the practice of writing fiction based on other people's work." (Shaffner 119) They take books and movies such as _Harry Potter_ or _The Hunger Games_ and write stories about the characters and settings. They may decide to change a scene or create an alternate ending or write about what happens after the series ends. The possibilities are endless. Fan fiction is no doubt a 21st century invention that no one was told to create as an assignment for their high school English class. It was first created by someone, whose idea was taken by someone who created a website where others are allowed to build off of that idea and write their own fan fiction stories. It sounds confusing, but it is true. These writers probably use writing techniques and styles learned in the classroom and are bringing them into the outside world. Charles Bazerman and David Russell explain their theory in Yancey's essay by stating, "Writing is alive when it is being written, read, remembered, contemplated, followed — when it is part of human activity…" (Yancey 190) Fan fiction does exactly that. Fans read, remember, contemplate and follow writers' work then write about it in their own way. Henry Jenkins states in his article, _Fan Fiction as Critical Commentary_, "Elsewhere, I have argued that fan fiction emrges from a balance between fascination and frustration. If the original work did not fascinate fans, they would not continue to engage with it. If it did not frustrate them in some level, they would feel no need to write new stories."

Can fan fiction be constituted as a new form of writing that is beneficial to students around the world? Yancey writes about the development of writing throughout the past couple of centuries and the new emergences of writing types. Fan fiction fits into that category of new forms of writing, but is it beneficial? A large portion of fan fiction writers are teenagers that want to join a new supportive community where they can write freely without getting to harshly criticized. Shaffner even writes in her essay about younger generations getting involved in fan fiction. "Better yet, [fanfiction] is a community that many readers join in their pre-teens or teens, take at their own pace, and often never leave." (Shaffner 119) Depending on how deep they sink themselves into the world of fanfiction, they will read hundreds, maybe even thousands of other fan fiction stories a year on these websites. From these, they may incorporate new writing styles or processes into their work at school. They could learn new writing techniques and habits that are beneficial to their essays in class. These techniques could possibly even help them in the assessments Yancey talks about such as the SAT and ACT. The friends they make on these fan fiction websites could even help them to edit their papers and give feedback of what to do differently or what to continue doing. Fan fiction could be beneficial in the long run to teens and pre-teens because it is a writing technique learned outside of school that could potentially help them in school.

Mary Louise Pratt explains the idea of contact zones in her article _Arts of the Contact Zone_. Pratt describes contacts zones as "social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination-like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today." (Pratt 106) Can the community of fan fiction fit into the idea of contact zones though? An example of a contact zone can be America versus Great Britain in 1776 when we wanted independence then went to war to gain that independence. I'm sure fan fiction has its share of disputes over stories or movies and ideas clash. However, from what I've seen, fan fiction writers and readers seem to get along for the most part. The majority of negative comments are constructive and everyone is generally nice to everyone. On the other hand, Pratt also explains her idea of a safe house. "We used the term to refer to social and intellectual spaces where groups can constitute themselves as horizontal, homogeneous, sovereign communities with high degrees of trust, shared understandings, temporary protection from legacies of oppression." (Pratt 116) In my eyes, fan fiction is more of a place where people can go and think out loud and get feedback on ideas and stories. Shaffner states: "They (fans) write fanfiction, they leave comments, they draw and make vids and user icons, they friend each other on LiveJournal and DreamWidth and follow each other on twitter. And they do all of these things because there is someone on the other end who loves what they love." Fan fiction is a community of people who work together rather than cultures who fight and compete on whose stories are better. "It's not a competition: when a writer becomes popular, the response is the prize." (Shaffner 119)

James Paul Gee is another writer who introduced the idea of affinity spaces. In his essay titled _Affinity Spaces: From Age of Mythology to Today's Schools_, he describes affinity spaces as "a place or set of places where people affiliate with others based primarily on shared activities, interests, and goals, not shared race, class culture, ethnicity, or gender" (Gee 66) An example of an affinity space could be a fandom of a football team. Everyone is welcome to join and everyone has access to becoming a fan. There is no membership fee and you can join anytime you'd like. I believe fan fiction could be considered an affinity space because it is a space where anyone can join and has a large community of people. However, for a space to be considered an affinity space, Gee says they need to have portals and generators and content, which basically means it needs to be accessible and working. For example, it cannot be a group that is no longer existing. Because the world of fan fiction is mainly online, those who do not have a computer or internet cannot access this group. However, does this expel fan fiction from being an affinity space?

Writers such as Rebecca Shaffner, Henry Jenkins, Mary Lousie Pratt, James Paul Gee, and Kathleen Blake Yancey all write about their ideas and ways to think of the world. Before Gee, I had never thought of places as 'spaces' that are open to all and free of judgment. Before Pratt, I had never heard of contact zones or safe houses and how they apply to my life. All of these writers bring up good points and ideas that make you think and allow you to connect them to your life. Fan fiction seemed to fit into the category off all of their ideas. It works as an affinity space, a safe house, and in some cases, a contact zone. Fan fiction is a vast space that works in bringing people together in several ways.

Work Cited

Gee, James Paul. _Affinity Spaces: From Age of Mythology to Today's Schools_: Participating in Cultures of Writing and Reading

Greene, Stuart. _Argument as Conversation: The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument_: Participating in Cultures of Writing and Reading

Pratt, Mary Louise. _Arts of the Contact Zone_: Participating in Cultures of Writing and Reading

Shaffner, Becca. _In Defense of Fanfiction_: Participating in Cultures of Writing and Reading

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. _Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key_: Participating in Cultures of Writing and Reading


	2. RetrospectiveProspective Essay

Maddy Karlick

11.23.2014

Roberto Ascalon

Retrospective/Prospective Essay

September 24th 2014 marked the first day for me as a college student. Like any other first day of school, my nerves were on fire. Butterflies fluttered around my stomach from the moment I went to bed the night before until I was out of class at 12:50. The anticipation of knowing this would be the first day of a new chapter in my life was something I had never experienced before. College was something that I had always thought about my whole life but actually meeting the day that I was a college student was unbelievable and overwhelming. My second class of the day, English 101, was nerve wracking. Everyone looked so old compared to high school so I thought I might have been in the wrong room while 20 other unrecognizable faces looked at me as I walked in the room. Once class actually began, it was interesting to say the least. I had thought the days of ice breakers and awkward first days of learning everyone's names was over yet the first thing we did was play a game called common ground. In this game, you have to share something about yourself that no one would know by looking at you. It was a fun game and I got to know interesting things about my classmates' lives that I would not have expected. Over the course of ten weeks, I learned more and more about all of them and it was an experience I would not soon forget. I learned a lot of things in English 101 including new techniques for writing as well as new styles of writing. I grew not only as a person, but a writer as well.

Applying for Western, I had a preconceived notion that Western's students were different and more free-spirted than most college students. After my first day in English 101 and hearing the things that made others different during the common ground game made me realize just how unique the students that attend Western Washington University truly are. Some students were into things like Pokémon and martial arts, one student even had same sex parents which I never had encountered in my life. I realized how different and diverse the people are here compared to the people that I went to school with for twelve years. I quickly realized these people were nothing like the people I had grown up with in Mill Creek and it was going to take a lot of adjusting to get used to this huge change. Even though I had heard about the unique lives of only twenty of Western's thousands of students, I fell more in love with the school and realized I had made the right choice.

Essay one was my first essay as a college student. It seemed like my entire school system from K-12 had always followed the same outline of how to write an essay and I was nervous that my system of writing was not worthy enough for a college level class. The only style of writing I had ever known was deductive, so having to write an inductive essay seemed difficult because I had never even heard of it before. It was difficult to grasp the concept of asking questions that I did not know the answer to and having a definite answer in an essay. After my one on one meeting, I got a better understanding of how to write inductive essays. I learned it was okay to not know the answer to a question and to think out loud in your paper. It was a fun experience to put stuff in my paper that I was pondering but could not include in deductive essays because it wouldn't make sense. Inductive essays broke my rules about writing essays and made it fun to write a type of essay I had never encountered before.

While learning about inductive essays and how they worked, we were taught all the techniques used to write them. The technique of pan/track/zoom allowed me to write a better essay and make it of higher quality. This technique has three parts to it that help you to think of ideas and get them to flow in your essay. Part one of this technique is panning. One would begin by looking at the big idea of your essay and write about it in a general point of view. Talk about the idea as a whole. Part two is tracking, where you would track or transition into another idea about your topic. The third and final part of this strategy is zoom. Zooming is where you zoom in on the nitty-gritty details of your topic. Get specific and dive into your topic, then start the process all over again. This strategy helps by allowing you to look at all aspects of your topic. It allows the writing to zoom in on the details as well as look at the big picture and think about how this topic affects the world. In my first essay, I did not quite understand this concept that well but after learning more about it, I was able to incorporate it into my second essay and improve greatly from my first essay. I did not zoom out at the bigger picture of fan fiction in my first essay and instead focused on the small parts of it. I was able to better zoom out and look at the bigger picture of my idea, then pan to look at all of the other parts of my ideas on fan fiction. I was able to zoom out and look at the bigger picture than zoom in and look at all of the details to truly give a rounded look at my essay.

Creating a conversation between authors also helped improve my essays greatly. Quoting different authors in my essay allowed me to bring in different opinions and ideas in my essay as well as allow me to comment on these quotes and show how my ideas parallel the suthors I was quoting. Reading these authors papers also gave me the ideas that I wrote about in my paper. Shaffner's ideas of fan fiction and how beneficial it is helped shaped my essay. Jenkin also brought in good ideas about why the fan writers these stories. Creating a conversation between these authors as well as Gee, Pratt, and Yancey, I was able to get ideas across and elaborate on those to show my ideas as well. This also allowed me to use their words to express ideas that I could not fully express.

Framing was another technique that helped me a lot in writing my essays. Framing was a strategy where you essentially would create two boxes in your mind, one inside of the other, and you would have to decide if you were going to frame affinity space around your idea or frame your idea around affinity space. I struggled with essay two in the beginning because I did not understand how to balance writing about affinity spaces and my topic of fan fiction. This technique was more of a way to think rather than a way to write. After learning more about framing it became easier to write. It was a hard concept to grasp at first but helped me a lot in writing my essay. I was able to frame my topic around affinity spaces. I took the ideas that Gee wrote about when he listed all of the necessary components of fan fiction and explained how fan fiction represented those components. It was easier to form ideas and write my essay when I thought about my topic in that way. My ideas flowed easier using this technique and writing my second essay instantly became much easier.

We also learned other techniques such as the authoritative "I" and the iceberg. I used these techniques without really being conscious of their use. The authoritative "I" is your voice in an essay and the use of it throughout your writing. In my essays, I always make sure my voice is in the essay because it is what makes your essay unique and different from everyone else's writing. The iceberg was a technique of creating a deeper analysis in my essays and creating more questions and ideas. The iceberg started with a question than used that question to ask more questions to create new ideas and keep the writing flowing. In this technique, you started at the top of the iceberg and as you deepened analysis, you went deeper into the iceberg. It helped me in having a mental picture of how to deepen analysis and make my writing have more depth.

English 101, in my experience, focused more on how to improve on writing rather than reading. I did not learn any new reading skills but through reading the assigned articles and essays, I learned new ideas and was given more insight to things such as fan fiction, affinity spaces, and contact zones. Before this class, I didn't know really anything about fan fiction or the community that revolves around it. After better informing myself about it and writing two essays on it, I learned a lot about everything related to fan fiction: why people write it, why people join, why people stay, and why people enjoy it. I had also never heard about affinity spaces before reading James Paul Gee's article on it. He created the idea that a community is a space, not a place. For a community to count as a space they have to entail all of these portals and generators and content and they have to be free to join and open to all. I thought his ideas were interesting and I had never thought of communities in that way. It gave me new insight and new knowledge on the world.

For essay one, we had no choice but to write about fan fiction. But in essay two we were given the option to write about a new topic or continue with the topic of fan fiction and just do a re-write. Most classmates decided to choose a new topic that was interesting to them but I had difficulty in thinking of a new topic so I stuck with the idea of fan fiction. At first I thought it would be easy because I could just change up my first essay and that would become my second. But I quickly realized I would have to start from scratch and write a completely new essay. I struggled at first but once I started incorporating the ideas of Gee's affinity spaces and framing, the ideas began flowing and I had no idea where to stop. Once I had to begin writing my presentation essay, it was just like writing my second essay but instead I was writing about contact zones and Yancey's ideas of education. These topics were not as easy to frame around fan fiction but became easily once I re read their essays with the idea of fan fiction in my head. I used various techniques such as panning and zooming to get a well-rounded view to my essay and show all the necessary points and ideas. My presentation essay was not too difficult to write because I had had practice re writing an essay to incorporate new ideas with essay two.

When I first began writing this Retrospective/Prospective essay, I did not think I had much to write about because I did not think I had learned that much in English 101. All I did was write a couple essays and read a couple of articles by writers I had never ever heard of. But after going through my work and my writings, I realized I learned a lot more than I had thought. The techniques that I learned in class helped me a lot in creating ideas and putting them into my essays. There were times when I would be writing my essay and I was thinking faster than I could type. New ideas were popping into my brains as I was writing and I felt like my essays would never end. I didn't know how or where to end my essays either because my ideas just kept flowing. As I was writing about one idea, I would think of another one and another one and so on. English 101 helped me a lot in improving my writing skills and I learned a lot from the readings we did. It opened my eyes to new ideas of Gee, Shanfer, Jenkins, and Greene. These techniques will definitely help me in writing future essays throughout my next couple years in college and improved my writing from what I had learned in high school. I now understand why English 101 is a required class at Western because it teaches you the basics to writing a quality essay which is necessary in college.


	3. Artifacts

Maddy Karlick

Artifacts

The introduction paragraph in my first essay about fan fiction is a paragraph I am proud of. I feel that it is well written and contains a lot of knowledge and conversation within it. I was able to bring up a lot of good points about fan fiction and supply a lot of background knowledge of the topic. I talked about how the community of fan fiction has worked together to create a helpful environment and support each other greatly. This happened to be my first inductive essay that I have written and despite my essay as a whole leaning more towards deductive, I feel that my introduction was the more inductive piece in my essay. I was able to make my conversation flow and let my ideas wander. I brought up different ideas throughout the paragraph and showed different concepts. From this, I was able to better improve my second essay by trying to make the rest of the essay more like my introduction. This part of my essay is also a strong depiction of my style of writing. I do not always mean to be, but I am a generous writer and find it difficult to criticize in my writing. In my opinion, positive writing allows the reader to get more excited about what they are reading. If you want a reader to think your topic is fun and interesting, you should talk about it in a positive way. Using strong word choice and diction, I feel that this introduction paragraph is a strong example of my writing this quarter in English 101.

Essay one was not a strong inductive essay as I was too sure of my answers and did not add much tension to my work. Essay two allowed me to work on this and improve my inductive essay abilities. My conclusion in essay two in particular shows my improvement on inductive writing. My conclusion in essay one stated what I talked about in my essay and further proved the questions I was asking instead of asking more questions that added tension. In my second conclusion, I asked a series of questions that I could not answer and that I feel added a lot of tension to the conversation. I zoomed out and was able to look at the bigger picture of fan fiction as well as getting very specific and detailed about the questions I asked. Fan fiction in the future and the writers' outside lives came up as questions as well as specific questions such as does paying for internet and computers exclude fan fiction from considering itself an affinity space. I did not answer my thesis question of 'is fanfiction an affinity space?' and rather gave my points but then backed off to let the reader decide on their own, unlike in my first essay. I am proud of my second essay because of the progress I made and improving on what I wanted to improve on in my writing. I feel that because I was not a strong inductive writer to begin with because I gave conclusions to all my answers instead of leaving them open, having a strong inductive conclusion is something I should be proud of improving on.

One thing I had never encountered prior to English 101 was writing an essay without a prompt. Coming up with a prompt for an essay was difficult for me at first. I did not know where to begin on coming up with a solid question that was specific but general enough to write 5-7 pages on it. In class, we did a written discussion where we got in groups and wrote a thinking question at the top of the page and passed our papers around and everyone answered the question. This assignment helped me a lot by giving me ideas of how to come up with thinking questions and examples of questions. Answering other peoples' questions, I was able to see examples of good thinking questions and that helped me think of my own. After writing multiple essays where I had to think of my own questions and write my essay based off of my own prompts, I improved greatly and creating my CIQ's became easier and easier throughout the ten weeks in English 101. I feel like this will help me greatly in my next couple of years in college because I know I will have to come up with my own essay prompts sometime in the future.

I have never been that strong of a writer, especially revising and editing because I usually do not catch my own mistakes. Editing was something I always dreaded as well because I did not want to have to read my essay all over again. My dad or classmate would look through my essays for me and coming to college, I could not necessarily have my dad or ex-classmates edit my papers for me. It was nice, however, to have a suitemate who loves writing and has already taken English 101 through the running start program at her high school. She loves to write and offered to look through and edit my papers when needed. I took advantage of that and had her edit all of my papers before turning them in to make sure everything was worded well and everything flowed correctly. She caught mistakes I didn't notice and gave me advice on how to make my writing better such as adding transitions and better diction. I learned a lot from what she had to tell me and it made my essays much better. With her knowledge of writing good papers and being nice enough to edit them, my essays got better scores and sounded better overall. They transitioned better and used better word choice. She even gave me tips on how to edit my papers on my own which will help me greatly in the next few years in college. She taught me how to add transitions and substitute words with better ones. She also taught me how to make sentences flow better and get rid of redundant words. Helping me get better at editing and revising allowed me to make my essays much better and succeed in English 101.

In my R-P essay, I chose to start my essay with a narrative about my first day as a college student and how nervous I was. I talked about it being a new chapter in my life and being both excited and nervous for such a drastic change in my life. This genre allowed me to talk more personally about my life and get more in depth about how English 101 affected my life as a new college student. It allowed me to develop as a writer and be more confident about my writing in college because I knew that the feedback I was getting meant my writing was good enough for college level classes. I was nervous that the writing style I had been taught all throughout school was not going to be good enough and it was going to be hard to adjust to something new. I went on to write about how I used each technique in my writing and how they helped me become a better writer. I also included images to demonstrate framing and the iceberg to give the reader a better understanding of what I was talking about. The "story telling" genre of my essay allowed me to be more causal with my writing and more personal and I felt like it did not have to be so serious. This style was easy to write in and it allowed ideas to continuously flow and the essay came along quite quickly. I was able to get all of my ideas across and in a fun and creative format.

From day one in English 101, we have been talking about the final portfolio and have been working on it throughout the entire quarter. We have been writing essays to be included in the portfolio as well as learning writing techniques to include in our essays to make them better. I chose to keep a constant theme throughout all of my papers—fan fiction. Our first essay was required to be about fan fiction and it was a topic that I felt was easy to write about and had many different sides and ideas that you could go with in my essays, so I wrote about it in all of my essays. So, for my design in my final portfolio, I decided to post all of my essays and components as a fan fiction post. I thought it would be a cool and original design to present my portfolio in. I wanted the portfolio to relate to the content of my essays and bring everything together into one. I chose to submit my pieces of writing in the way I did because I wanted them to go in chronological order as well as go in the order that I have progressed. I have improved greatly since essay one by getting a better understanding of techniques and worked on diction and ideas. I wanted to start with my first pieces of work that were not so great than move on to my better pieces of writing.


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